aceartinc. presents: Shelly Low this Friday, Oct. 13
Shelly Low
Self-Serve at La Pagode Royale
October 13 – November 18, 2006
Reception: Friday 13th October, 7:30pm
(Artist in Attendance)
Artist talk: Saturday 14th October, 2pm
This current work springs from the research in Low’s previous project: La Pagode Royale, and explores the commodification and manufacturing of culture. La Pagode Royale takes its name from the Polynesian/Chinese restaurant, which Low’s parents owned and worked in during the late seventies and eighties.
This project experiments with the use of food, and involves building a large scale Pagoda out of rice krispie squares. Rice krispies are a processed, sweetened derivative of rice. Rice krispies “squares” are a familiar North American treat, with its’ golden color alluring and desirable. The main sculptural element of this project takes the name of Low’s parent’s restaurant and materializes it into a 9 foot pagoda made up of over a thousand rice krispie squares. Already, a golden pagoda is trivial in terms of representing what it is to be ‘Chinese’. And to be built out of a North American processed treat (rice krispie squares), further enhances a ‘served up’ idea of culture.
As a business, restaurant owners manufacture a cultural product by complying to and perpetuating certain stereotypes – in a sense ‘serving up’ notions of an ethnic or exotic ‘other’, based on folklore, nostalgia and myth. As a form of advertisement, the choosing of a name is a self-conscious projection and representation of a ‘status’ or a ‘culture’ while at the same time reflecting and trying to appeal to current trends and expectations of the social milieu.
Shelly Low is also interested in what is considered to be ‘traditional’ or ‘authentic’ and how this is structured through food culture and consumption. In the ‘business’ side of the restaurant business, Chinese food is cooked up to have mass appeal. Dishes made for the Western consumer are fabricated to seem ‘authentic’ but not too strange from what is familiar to their palate. Culture enters the food market in a fragmented processed way – foreign, but safely within the familiar. How do we as consumers accept and perpetuate notions of the ‘other’, and how does the worker/immigrant substantiate a sense of ‘self’? And as Canada continues to become multicultural, what are the things that become cultural signifiers? What are the images we hold on to and perpetuate?
Self-Serve at La Pagode Royale expands this research to include the use of self-portraiture. Some in the form of large digital printouts, photomontage wall installation, others are incorporated and printed out on assembled Chinese take out menus. In these series of portraits Low uses herself as the subject in performance with the implements by which we consume, to explore the relationship between cultural identity and consumption. As someone who crosses both sides of Western/Eastern culture, this new work is a reflection of cultural stereotypes and self-representation, and in relation to the restaurant, Low looks at herself rather than the food.
Shelly Low is a Montreal artist who draws from both the immigrant experiences of her parents and her own hybrid experience as a Chinese-Canadian. Her art practice uses materials that are recognizable and familiar, and through some form of interaction, they are recontextualized to form new meaning. Being fascinated by the concept of small actions acumulating into something large, she highlights the process of making and repetition. In addressing the invented, ephemeral and vague nature of ethnicity, she appreciates the use of humour and irony.
The Artist would like to express her gratitude to CUPFA: Concordia University Part-Time Professional Grant and the Conseil des arts et des lettres Québec.
aceartinc. gratefully acknowledges the generous support of associate members & donors, our volunteers, The Manitoba Arts Council, The Canada Council for the Arts, The Winnipeg Arts Council, The Winnipeg Foundation, WH and SE Loewen Foundation, The Family of Wendy Wersh, The Sign Source, Kromar Printing Ltd. and Design Type.